Code of ethics of publications

1. General
1.1. The Regulation on Publication Ethics for the Journal ‘Nuclear and Radiological Safety’ (hereinafter ‘the Regulation’) has been developed taking into consideration the recommendations given in the following documents of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing - COPE, June 2015;
Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals - COPE, October 2008;
Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct - COPE, March 2015;
How to Deal with Text Recycling - COPE, July 2016; A Short Guide to Ethical Editing - COPE, 15 January 2016;
Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations - COPE, January 2014;
Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers - COPE, March 2013;
How to Handle Authorship Disputes: a Guide for New Researchers - COPE, 2003.
1.2. This Regulation is intended to broaden and complement the requirements laid down in the Regulation on the Journal ‘Nuclear and Radiological Safety’ approved by the FBI SEC NRS order № 76 dated 24.06.2016.
1.3. The quarterly academic and research journal of the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service (hereinafter ‘the journal’) strives to achieve excellence in ethical publishing.
1.4. The principles laid down in this Regulation are obligatory for all parties involved in the review and publishing of the scientific articles in the journal ‘Nuclear and Radiological Safety’.
1.5. Adherence of all participants of the editorial and publishing process to the ethical principles of scientific publishing is conducive to securing intellectual property rights of the authors, improving the journal image in the eyes of the scientific community, and preventing misuse of the copyrighted material for the personal benefit of individual persons.

2. Terms and definitions Compilation – an article composed of materials published earlier by other authors and neither recast nor personally interpreted by the author. An article composed as an assortment of references and quotes not commented, evaluated or analysed by the author, is also considered to be a compilation. Original text – authentic primary text produced as a result of an individual work, not borrowed or translated. Plagiarism – intentional misappropriation of authorship of somebody else’s work of science, somebody else’s ideas or inventions. Plagiarism is a breach of the existing Russian law, and entails legal liability. Ethics of scientific publications – a system of standards of professional conduct in relations between authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and readers in the course of creation, dissemination and use of scientific publications.

3. Ethical principles that should govern the author of scientific publication
3.1. The author should submit valid results of the work or research. Knowingly false, fraudulent or fabricated statements are regarded as unethical conduct and hence are unacceptable.
3.2. The author should participate in a peer review process for his/her manuscript. The journal’s editor-in-chief may ask the author to hand in, for editorial review purposes, the source material of the scientific paper, and the author should be prepared to provide free access to this material, as appropriate, and in any case, should be prepared to preserve the source material within reasonable timeframe after the manuscript publication.
3.3. The author should guarantee that the findings of the study outlined in the submitted manuscript are fully original, and have been obtained as a result of an individual work. Any borrowed fragments and/or statements must be accompanied with an obligatory reference to their author and primary source. Excessive borrowing and plagiarism in any form, including unregistered quotes, rephrasing or appropriation of the rights to the results of other people's research are unethical and unacceptable. Papers in the nature of a compilation of the materials published earlier by other authors and not recast or personally interpreted by the author will not be taken for publication.
3.4. The author should realize that he/she bears primary responsibility for the novelty and validity of the findings of the scientific research.
3.5. Acknowledgments should be made to recognise contributions of all persons who have somehow influenced the course of the study or the nature of the work submitted for publication. In particular, the manuscript should give references to Russian and foreign language publications that have made the difference in the research. The information obtained privately in the course of a conversation, through correspondence or in discussion with a third party, should not be used without prior written consent of the source of this information. All sources should be disclosed. Even if the author has used written and illustrative materials of many other people, he/she shall obtain their permissions to do so, and submit these permissions to the journal’s editorial board.
3.6. The author should submit to the journal the original manuscript that has not been published earlier in any other journal, and has not been submitted to any other journal for consideration. Failure to respect this principle will be regarded as a major breach of the publication ethics, and will give grounds for withdrawing the article from the review. The article shall have an original text, i.e. the text the way it has been submitted to the journal is to be published in a printed periodical for the first time. If some parts of the manuscript have been published earlier within another article, the author should give reference to this earlier work, and point out the substantive difference between the new work and the previous one. Word-for-word duplication of 5 the author’s own work and its rephrasing are unacceptable; the author’s own work may be used only as a basis for new conclusions.
3.7. The author should provide a correct list of his/her co-authors. The co-authors should include all persons who have made significant intellectual contributions to the work concept, structure and conduct, and to the interpretation of the results of the work presented. Gratitude should be expressed to all other people who also have provided input in some aspects of the work. The author should also ensure that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript, and have agreed to it being submitted for publication. All designated authors shall be publicly accountable for the content of the article. If the article is a multidisciplinary product, the co-authors may be accountable for their personal contributions, with the collective accountability of coauthors for the overall product. It is unacceptable to mention among the co-authors any persons who did not participate in the study.
3.8. If the author happens to find a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her manuscript in the process of its review or after it has been published, he/she should immediately inform the journal’s editorial board, to make joint decision on the way to admit the error and /or rectify it as soon as possible. Should someone from the journal’s editorial board hear from a third party that the published work has significant errors, the author must immediately delete or rectify them, or else provide evidence proving validity of the information presented.

4. Ethical principles in the work of the reviewer
4.1. Expert review is meant to help author improve the text of his/her manuscript, and facilitate the editor-in-chief’s decision on publication.
4.2. The reviewer who does not believe himself/herself to have proper expertise in the manuscript’s subject, or knows that he / she will not be able to review the article in a timely manner, shall inform the editor-in-chief of this and refrain from the review of this manuscript.
4.3. The author or co-authors of the reviewed article, as well as thesis supervisors and/or staff members employed with the same division as the author, cannot be reviewers.
4.4. Any manuscript submitted for a review should be treated as a confidential document. It must not be discussed with other people, except for those designated by the editor-in-chief.
4.5. The reviewer is obliged to be impartial. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. The reviewer should express his/her opinion clearly and in a well-argued manner.
4.6. The reviewer should seek to disclose, as far as possible, any publications relevant to the reviewed manuscript and not quoted by the author. Any assertion made in the process of the review to the effect that some finding, conclusion or argument given in the reviewed article has already been encountered in literature, shall be corroborated with exact reference. The reviewer should also bring to the editor-inchief’s notice any marked similarities or partial commonalities between the reviewed manuscript and any other article published earlier.
4.7. The reviewer should not use for his/her personal purposes the information and ideas discussed in the article given to him/her for the review, and should respect the confidentiality of this information and ideas.
4.8. The reviewer should not accept manuscript for review if he/she has conflicting interests caused by competition, collaboration or any other relations with any authors or organisations related to the manuscript.

5. Principles of professional ethics in the work of the editor-in-chief and the editorial board
5.1. When making a publication decision, the journal’s editor-in-chief shall be governed by the reliability of the data presented and by the scientific significance of the work under consideration.
5.2. The editor-in-chief shall not have any conflicts of interest in respect of the manuscripts that he/she accepts or rejects for publication.
5.3. The editor-in-chief is responsible for deciding whether to accept or reject manuscript submitted to the journal. In so doing, he/she should take guidance in the Regulation on the Journal ‘Nuclear and Radiological Safety’, approved by the FBI SEC NRS order № 76 of 24.06.2016, while abiding by legal restraints and avoiding slander, copyright infringement and plagiarism. During decision making, the editor-in-chief may consult with the editorial board members and reviewers.
5.4. The editor-in-chief should evaluate manuscript’s intellectual content exclusively, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, origin, nationality, social status or political affiliation of the authors.
5.5. The editorial board members must not use for personal purposes, or pass on to third parties, any unpublished data discussed in the manuscripts submitted for consideration (without prior written consent of the author).
5.6. The editor-in-chief should not allow the information to be published if there are good grounds to believe it to be plagiarism.
5.7. The editor-in-chief should not leave unanswered complaints related to the considered manuscripts or published materials. In case of detecting conflict situation, the editor-in-chief should take all appropriate steps to redress violated rights. In case of detecting an error, all necessary measures should be taken to publish correction, retraction, clarification or apology, as appropriate.
5.8. The editor-in-chief should encourage the editorial board, reviewers and authors to fulfil their ethical obligations in compliance with this Regulation.